I wonder if they ALL drug test, including the "higher ups".
Posted on 01/24/2005 12:38:46 PM PST by Dan from Michigan
Weyco fires 4 employees for refusing smoking test
1/24/2005, 2:50 p.m. ET
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Four employees of Okemos-based health benefits administrator Weyco Inc. have been fired for refusing to take a test that would determine whether they smoke cigarettes.
The company instituted a policy on Jan. 1 that makes it a firing offense to smoke — even if done after business hours or at home, the Lansing State Journal reported Monday.
Weyco founder Howard Weyers said previously that he instituted the tough anti-smoking rule to shield his company from high health care costs.
"I don't want to pay for the results of smoking," he said.
The anti-smoking rule led one employee to quit work before the policy went into place. Since Jan. 1, four more people were shown the door when they balked at the anti-smoking test.
"They were terminated at that point," said Chief Financial Officer Gary Climes.
Even so, Weyco said, the policy has been successful. Climes estimated that about 18 to 20 of the company's 200 employers were smokers when the policy was announced in 2003.
Of those, as many as 14 quit smoking before the policy went into place. Weyco offered them smoking cessation help, Climes said.
"That is absolutely a victory," Climes said.
I wonder if they ALL drug test, including the "higher ups".
On what basis?
If such an arrangement is or has been imposed without your consent, your employer is at HUGE risk.
There are variations on the theme, of course. If your employer doesn't wish to pay your ''health insurance'' costs if you smoke (or play hockey, or fornicate, or even breathe), he certainly can do so...but only a priori; he cannot make an arbitrary decision to do so at some convenient-to-him time down the road after you've worked there X number of years.
This whole business comes down to ultimately nothing more than the inevitable result of private employers offering ANY sort of ''insurance'' to employees. A result, btw, which -- what else? -- eventuated from the pure overreaching of gov't, and the self-delusional notion on the part of the citizenry that ANY governmental act is EVER ''temporary''.
All this commentary assumes, unfortunately, that this nation and the notionally ''sovereign'' states that comprise it, are still operating under something resembling a code of ''law''. Please estimate for yourself whether that situation is or is not the case.
That was one of the many terrible decisions our "supreme court" has made.
In order to refute it, I'll go back to my point about it being impossible for a creation of a servant of the principal to be on equal legal footing with the principal.
(What does it say it about a court that says corporations are people, but slaves aren't????)
>>Alaska has no room to talk after they killed so many people on that flight, 261 I believe.<<
Baloney
>>Gosh if we're lucky, just maybe if we are real real lucky, they will start killing off those homeless freaks and then the ones who don't live up to "our" standards, then we can work on those who don't look like "the right people" then and just then we can all get along is that it? you pompous a$$hole.<<
I was talking about porn. You feel free to jump to whatever conclusion you want from that. We all need exercise one way or another.
Meanwhile, in a free society, a person would have the right to creat a company from their own hard work and ideas and choose to hire or fire whomever they like, for whatever reason.
Call me what you like. Whenever one attempts to insult me, I consider the source.
Actually, I think banning smoking due to second hand smoke IS junk science. I am also against the government banning it. But I defend a private companies right to hire and fire whomever they please.
I think porn should be banned and firmly believe the first amendment does not apply. I am sick of it being defended as just another form of speech and it isn't that bad. It is rotting our culture from the inside. It may already be too late to undo the damage done.
But that's just me...
>>What about the high cost of homosexual sex? Are they going to prohibit that because gay men engage in activities that involve the need for frequent clinic visits and prescriptions? Why target smokers?<<
I agree. But smokers are a good start. It made my daughter-in-law quit! 8^>
True, but as far as I'm concerned, even if it is done "with consent", it's still null and void. (When option A is "family starves", and option B is "sign the form", can such as thing as "free will", which is a necessary condition of "free consent" really exist?)
No Free man or woman can voluntarily surrender their Rights.
Or as Sam Adams put it:
"If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
I've had occasion to demonstrate this exact condition, on three separate occasions, to former employers by having had assorted courts tell them first-hand, and in so many words, to either revise this curious and unlawful viewpoint, or else pay rather exceptional amounts of civil damages.
If you ACCEPT, as presumably a condition of employment AT THE TIME you accept employment, the condition that your employer may in some/any fashion regulate your non-business, off-time, and otherwise lawful activities, well, fine. That's up to you. No quarrel here.
When, however, AFTER having been employed, the employer makes such an attempt without your consent, he/she/it is in DEEP weeds at civil law.
Consult your attorney; you'll find out immediately that I've told you nothing but simple and easily demonstrable fact.
FReegards!
Exactly.
I've been told this particular ruling could be used in efforts to fight government enforced smoking bans on private business.
I don't see how, but then I'm not and have never professed to be a member of the legal community. I've written my fair share of legislation, some of which is now part of the Delaware Code, but that means nothing when it comes to attempting to use case law against something.
Go to your nearest middle east studies department.
They will cater to all your fascist needs.
Nobody but NOBODY costs more in healthcare dollars than the hypochondriac sissymen (and gals) I've had to work with over the years.
My God, they go to the doctor for EVERYTHING -- colds, hangnails, and menstrual cramps. Not to mention the costs they incur running to their therapists every five minutes after getting the vapors from witnessing something they find "disturbing," like those hunting shows on ESPN ("Oh, those poor, poor little deer! Get me my Valium!")
Now, THOSE are the people who cost some big bucks.
Regards,
I am against smoking but I hope that you are right and that they win. But we are becoming a nation ruled by Corporate Fascism and so I doubt it.
Gee....I wasn't really clear about my stance on some of your previous posts.........but this one wins me over totally.
we're on the same track.
I must say, you present a strong argument.
However, the ''family starves or sign the form'' argument is nothing other than a rhetorically embarrassing example of the famous error ''false dichotomy''.
As if, (chortle), no other option is available? What nonsense.
C'mon, mate, you can be more persuasive than that, without such an egregious error. Please keep in mind that no one, certainly not I, said that asserting one's absolute right in a situation as described in this thread is necessarily either easily or conveniently done.
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